What’s ripe and ready to eat right now.
As I was putting this together, I started to notice a theme. When I learned the news that a grant had fully funded the Northside Food Co-op (page 4), it became clear as day and the spring season.
The money for the co-op came from the New Hanover Community Endowment, which was established with proceeds from the sale of the New Hanover Regional Medical Center to Novant Health in 2020. The endowment has been tasked, by the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners, to invest its nearly $1.3 billion to benefit the community.
What could be more beneficial than a cooperative grocery store? What tells the story of a community better than where they buy their food? I may be a special case, but whenever I’m in a new city, I go to the grocery store and can spend a good 40 minutes walking the aisles marveling at things I’ve never seen before.
This store’s story is a paradigm about how food brings us together. Stay tuned.
Further south, a group of downtown restaurant and bar owners saw the power of cooperation to offer customers single-barrel bourbon unavailable anywhere else (see page 6). The trick is you have to buy the whole barrel to get it. Most businesses can’t afford that one-time outlay nor have a place to store the 150 to 200 bottles that arrive a few months later. The fun part is visiting the distillery to choose your barrel. No one else will have anything like it.
Commercial fishing has been having a hard time. Fishing is seasonal like anything else but a guaranteed catch is not possible; the vicissitudes of weather and climate and regulation often don’t match the needs of supply and demand. One recreational fisherman from the Port City thinks he can redress this imbalance using technology to improve communication: He invented an app. (See page 5.)
Food brings us together at blueberry festivals, at farmers markets and when local ingredients end up on local tables.
See you in the grocery aisle.
This story appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of the magazine.
